It’s been a while since I last wrote an article for this column. I was questioned a couple of times the reasons for the same from different quarters. How does it matter I would genuinely respond with a quizzing look. Yet, every time the question cropped up, it prompted me to ask myself how many more lines will quieten the disorientation both within and without. How much more penning will determine if I’m seeped in deep saffron or virgin white or a dark shade of green or is it red? Colours someday merge to a dangerous black.
A blackout of thoughts, opinions to be replaced by insensitive judgements. It triggers a status quo of sorts, where nothing makes sense in a seemingly maddening state of affairs. Events blow up pulling, tugging, overwhelming and overpowering the being. The desire to revert back to childhood is acute if not urgent. Yet, this tempting but impractical urge meets a quick death no sooner it is conceived and I’m compelled to face the living dead. Anguished faces, traumatic looks, inhuman deeds stares at me wrenching the soul.
I observe my fleeting thoughts and remind myself that these are to be caged, the unbridled passions and sentiments be incarcerated as well. The lapse of judiciously drawing a line in what I say or do will certainly not warrant pardon. It then prompt me to scrutinize my rights, including ‘Freedom of Expression’ in new light. A veil of caution drops drowning me I don’t attempt to undo. I remain passive, flaccid, there are no thoughts, opinion, views and nothing to pen.
The scrambled mind and disquieted heart needs introspection. There is no respite. Only barrage of information and different version of truths –doctored or un doctored thrusted from all possible quarters. It culminates in verbal diarrhoea on Television sets at prime time, garnering TRP. I struggle to make sense and decipher the new fangled definition dished out.
Ultra left liberals, fundamentalists, radicals, atheists or plain nitwits…they pop up in new avatars and demand their pound of flesh. Suddenly, I’m no longer myself, I realize I need to tag myself, I need to defend myself, I need to brand myself. And apart from religion I need an ideology to survive and opium to cling on, to suck on. I learn it will keep me occupied like the many others. The brackets of “US” gives assurance and false sense of security and a good reason to be pitted against the ‘other’.
Thus the forces feed us, condition us, polarize us. Keep us on the boil. We take leave of our senses. We go for each others throats, the ‘tags’ help us to quickly identify, mercilessly lynch and indignantly justify. We just move with the morbid flow.
We as individuals, and citizen of this great Republic need to do a re-think of our rights which are always accompanied by responsibilities, our ideologies which are accompanied by commitments, our dreams which are accompanied by steadfastness and our autonomy which is accompanied by loyalty. For no matter what, de-stabilizing the country is certainly not the solution is the ultimate truth.
A truth that needs to penned on every heart.
